


Snakes and Pepper

by D20Owlbear



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: (But not that kind), Aziraphale Misses Crowley, Aziraphale Wishes Crowley Could be There to Share a Meal of Delicious Snake Meat, Aziraphale eats erotically, Eating, Food Kink, Kinda, No beta; we burn like the Bentley, Other, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Pine scented, Piney - Freeform, Rated T for Aziraphale’s eating, Set during Crowley's depression nap, So it ends on a wistful note, Strange Metaphors Involving Snake Meat, While thinking about Crowley, also Rated T for Tasty, aziraphale pines, mentions of Crowley Enjoying Watching Aziraphale Eating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 17:09:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22499593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/D20Owlbear/pseuds/D20Owlbear
Summary: Aziraphale eats snake meat.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 51
Collections: Chaotic Omens: The Fallout of a Big Bang





	Snakes and Pepper

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marleenam](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marleenam/gifts).



> Please blame/thank Marleenam for this prompt. Proudly filled under 2k!!

It was 1909 and Aziraphale was in China; Hunan to be exact. He’d traveled East over from Sichuan, making the most of Heaven’s current audit of miracles and assignments, which had kept them busy for the last 8 years or so. Aziraphale, if he were a betting angel, would put money on the audit lasting a tidy decade even. Gabriel and the other Archangels did like the number of totality, though he did muse to himself that it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for them to draw it out for 12 years for the governmental perfection implications of the number…

Either way, he likely had plenty of time to enjoy the cuisines all the delightful humans had come up with based on what was available near them. The spices in Sichuan were remarkable, far different in taste and heat than he was used to in more Western areas. They called it má là, or 'spicy and numbing’ which was a truly pleasant sensation, feeling his lips and mouth burn in a removed sort of way, not quite enough to hurt per se but certainly enough to make him rather constantly aware of it. Privately, he thought to himself that biting into those sorts of peppers was what kissing Crowley might feel like.

Being an angel was useful, because while he was obviously foreign he spoke the language well and came across as someone who could be trusted. There were, of course, those who were more sensitive to such things and found him unnerving, but humans who could sense the divine (as great and terrible as it was) were relatively few and far between so it didn’t cause him any true obstacles to where he was now.

He nodded politely and kept a warm look on his face as he sat down to eat in a highly recommended… well, restaurant wasn’t quite the word for it. It seemed like a few of the grandmothers in the city had decided to open a place to sell their home cooking as a hobby. Aziraphale could already tell he’d love it, as he often felt the heart of a culture’s cuisine was in what was made for the family table and prepared with love and joy. Crowley might scoff at him loudly whenever he said it, especially when they visited posh places of high regard and Aziraphale mentioned that the chef must be very dutiful offhand rather than passionate, but he truly did believe that food made with care and joy and love tasted so much better. Perhaps it was because he was an angel.

Going through the menu was simple enough, it was handwritten and only a single page long and by the time someone came by to take his order he had plenty of adventurous choices to make.

“Yes, I’ll have the stinky tofu, shrimp in lotus pod, stir-fried duck blood, and the candied lotus balls,” Aziraphale ordered merrily in Xiang (he’d thought about speaking in Mandarin but hearing the rest of the restaurant whispering in Hunanese he figured this was a safer bet, if of course, he was a betting angel) and was about to hand over the menu before his eyes caught something he’d skipped over before. 

“Oh,” the breath went out of him in a fell swoop and a blush fell across his cheeks, a light dusting of pink. “Actually, please give me the tien tsin snake instead of the stir-fry. Thank you.” he handed over the menu and folded his hands in his lap and shifted in his seat. He hadn’t seen Crowley in some time, not since their fight at the duck pond. He also hadn’t expected to think of Crowley while he was in China, of all places. But here he was, in the mountainous region of Hunan proper and sitting in a small restaurant run by three grandmothers as he waited on home-style cooked food. And thinking of Crowley.

Aziraphale sighed and cast his gaze out the window, suddenly feeling listless. The turn of the century had come and gone and still, Crowley hadn’t found him to poke or prod him into dinner or inviting him into the shop, Aziraphale was going to turn rather melancholy. It had been some time since they had only met once a century or so. But that had been so long ago when he was still trying to convince Crowley, and himself, that they were enemies. That they could be nothing more, let alone friends.

Lost in his thoughts he almost didn’t realize how much time had passed, simply staring out the window in silent contemplation, of himself and Crowley and the things they had seen, until the first dishes were placed on his table. He blinked a few times at the large portions before reminding himself that people were meant to eat at communal tables with friends and family here. He cast a glance over at other tables and bolstered himself with the feelings of love wafting off of them and refused, quite pointedly, to think about Crowley here to help him. Not that he would, of course, the snake rarely ate much if anything at all. Aziraphale thought he’d like to have a companion though, eating alone and enjoying solitary comforts were hardly as enjoyable when one didn’t have the _option_ of company. Well, he possibly did, but keeping the company of humans was inherently different as they couldn’t communicate in the same way angels could, even the Fallen, with their souls and spirits so closely tied to their corporeal form. 

Aziraphale sighed again and took in some of the ambient love around him and shook his head to clear away any melancholia that might have built up. Picking up a personal-sized bowl provided and chopsticks he tried the blackened tofu and then the shrimp in lotus pods until he got a good taste of each with the aromatic jasmine rice cleansing his palette as he went. The sweet lotus balls would be saved for dessert and, well, he tried not to think about the fourth plate on the table.

Perhaps he ought not to have ordered it. Four was an unlucky number here, and he avoided looking at the fillets. They were white and could easily be mistaken for fish, and he almost could convince himself he hadn’t made a mistake in ordering something so vulgar as _snake_. Not that snake in and of itself was vulgar to eat, but considering his companionship with one (or at least a demon who was shaped like a snake sometimes) made it so.

How dare he be so tempting, even when so far away? The spices were aromatic and the vinegar used to brighten and enhance the peppers in Hunanese cuisine smelled nearly divine. Could it be? No, of course not, he shook his head again sharply in one more failed attempt to clear his mind of traitorous thoughts. No, it was just food, divine in all the ways food was, having been provided by Her and fashioned further with human hands. The most mundane sort of divine, and the everyday worship he partook of.

Steeling himself, and not about to admit to a mistake aloud, Aziraphale’s chopstick shook as he cut into the flesh, braised to perfection and fork-soft. His head whirled at all the thoughts he tried to pay no mind to, to keep out, but couldn’t seem to manage the feat. Would Crowley be this soft? Could he press into him with a finger and feel his flesh make way for him?

He transferred the cut piece of snake to his bowl, hand trembling. Somehow it felt like he was standing on a precipice, or perhaps before the Tree in the Garden, there was a snake there too. Tempting and offering forbidden knowledge, things once learned could not be unlearned, could not be forgotten. His lungs seized and the smell of peppers and vinegar and garlic invaded his mouth. Aziraphale was suddenly ravenous despite already having eaten, his mouth watered at the thought of snake entering his mouth guided by chopsticks, and melting on his tongue in a way he was sure it would.

Aziraphale swallowed heavily, gave a shuddering breath, and let the snake pass over his lips.

Flavor burst on his tongue, a searing heat that took barely seconds to hit, enhanced and brightened by the vinegar in ways the Sichuan peppers on their own didn’t. Those were a numbing sort of heat, but this would build and keep burning thanks to the vinegar. And Aziraphale wasn’t sure he would dislike it, the heat warmed him and the vinegar slowed his heart rate, he could already feel it in his corporation—which has always been more sensitive to such things than perhaps the average human because he craved all the sensations that came with eating.

Just as he suspected, the meat melted in his mouth in the way braised chicken sometimes could when done well and cooked long enough, he barely had to chew. And just like that, it was over except for the burning sensation on his tongue and the insides of his cheeks and in the back of his throat. He swallowed firmly, feeling the food slide down how throat and sit heavily in his stomach. Aziraphale knew that it wasn’t a heavy meal, there was no way a single bite could be weightier and more burdensome than what he’d already eaten, and yet.

It sank in him, and felt like guilt maybe, but the ravenous feeling of before hadn’t been tempered. Instead, it flared up in his gut and it turned from desire to need.

His mouth was dry and his thoughts single-minded, focused on nothing more than satisfying this gluttonous compulsion Aziraphale was too weak-willed to resist. He was lost in the building heat and the melting of snake flesh on his tongue until the platter of braised Hunanese snake was emptied.

Absently he fished out a stray piece of crisped skin from the peppery, briny sauce and his tongue lit up once more at the tip where he caught the deluge of hot juices dripping from the skin. 

It hurt. It felt like hellfire on his lips, it was everything he’d hoped for.

He came back to himself, inhabited his corporation and body fully in a way he wasn’t used to. There was always a slight separation between him and it, he had to concentrate on the pleasure that coursed through it when he ate or partook of other earthly joys. But here, now, he was seated fully within it, dwelt there in a physical temple to Her creations, and it felt like sublimation. Like he'd gone through a crucible and come out purer than before. More purely human, more purely earthly, less divine in ways other angels would sing the praises of and closer to the divinity inherent within the world where She had left the mark of her creations.

He felt like starstuff. He felt like the heat in the center of the sun and the glow of light through willow leaves and the soft summer breeze. 

He missed Crowley terribly.


End file.
